Iowa City

I am awake and showered before 7:00 am so that I can accompany my mother and brother to Iowa City to see what the doctors want to do about Mom's latest MRI, which shows a new/returning tumor in her brain. Remission is over and this horrid dance is starting all over again. There was a time when I thought I might attend the University of Iowa and Iowa City represented hope and independence and adulthood to me, but now it's just surgery and radiation and dumbed down medical jargon and the gag-inducing scent of iodine. When all of this is over, however it is over, I hope to never set foot in that town again.

Plus she's a coke head, which totally kills the appetite anyway.

Kate Moss once said that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. But that bitch never tasted my mom's fudge, which I have recreated. I still swear it's a slightly different shade of brown, but it tastes the same. Yay for mommy fudge!

It's my birthright not to screw this up.

My mother makes fudge every Xmas. My whole life she's been trying to show me how so that when she's gone someone can carry on the tradition, but I never paid attention. Tomorrow I am going to try my hand at fudge, because chemo has made her too tired to do it.  I'll need to borrow her heavy pan, and maybe the plastic cake pans she uses for it to cool in.  Wish me luck, because I heard that if you screw it up you get grainy fudge that never sets up.

A cancer update, for those who were sick of phonetically written Tommy updates

So my mom has finished her first round of chemo and tomorrow we get to make the drive back to Iowa City (hopefully for the last time) to get her head scanned and meet with the brain surgeon to make sure the 2 weeks of radiation she had actually did shrink her remaining almost-too-small-to-worry-about-but-hey-they're-brain-tumors-so-we-worry-anyway-now-that-the-big-one-is-out tumors. Because no matter how well the chemo goes, chemo won't affect the brain and brain tumors are serious business.

Danny is either A) sick, or B) teething and having a growth spurt. Because he is cranky as all Hell and sleeps a lot.  The problem with this is that they won't administer chemo to anyone with an active infection so if my mom gets sick even a little, the chemo gets postponed and the tumors all grow and spread and I really don't want my petri dish of a kid to be the reason my mom got lung cancer in her spleen.  Also, so we can make the trip tomorrow and sit in the waiting rooms and do all the stuff required to talk to and understand a neurosurgeon (Is it bad taste to say the guy is hot, too? Because dude is smoking!) I am dumping my kids with my "I think I'm getting sinusy" friend for the day.  A week before Thanksgiving.  So tomorrow I am going to wake up early, get dressed, wake up the boys, dress them, boot Ryan off to school, go pick up my mom, go ditch the boys at my friend's house when she gets home from driving her kids to school, and then call my doctor's office and make appointments to hopefully get them enough antibiotics to make them uncontagious by Thanksgiving so my mom can eat turkey at my house.  Then I will drive for an hour and a half to Iowa City to the hospital to talk to Dr McNeuroSteamy and figure out if my mom's problems are just lymphnodey or if they're brainy too.
And I will try to do it all on half a Xanax because a whole one makes me too drowsy to drive.

well, crap

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/small-cell-lung/healthprofessional/page1

Are you FUCKING serious?

A woman with a tumor in her brain the size of a chicken egg walks, with the help of both of her children, into a hospital for seven hours of neurosurgery. A nurse asks, "So what are we doing today?" and the patient answers, "They're just going to pop a little thing out of the back right here," and points at her head.

It is so hard to sift through the layers of denial and euphemism and sugar-coating to get a straight answer from my mother.  She drove herself to the hospital for a week of treatments- and we let her- because the radiation guy told her they would make her tired but she could continue to drive as long as she took a nap first.  Now she needs a ride home because she is unsteady and can't drive, but the radiation guy warned her that that would probably happen so she's not worried.

And you can't scream, "OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK!?" at someone with cancer because they are sick and do not need the added stress.

And on a completely unrelated note, Congrats to my brother and his wife on the birth of their daughter.

"More special last cocoa please"

While my mother was staying here after her brain surgery, she would often sit quietly at the table and drink coffee. This was very boring for the kids to watch, so they of course decided that it must be amazingly fun to do, since nothing could ever actually be that boring.  So Tommy would ask to drink "copy" with Doan (it's what we call her. long story) and I would make him some hot cocoa and he would sit there quietly with her and hold his head up with his hand like she did, and pretend that he had a big owie under his hair too, and then he'd get bored and go play. But they bonded so it was okay.
Now that she is gone, and the sweet "bonding with Grandma" thing is done for the moment, he still wants to drink hot cocoa all the time. (How did I not see that coming?) So at least a couple times a day I give in to his incessant begging and give him a cup of Swiss Miss.  Today Tom left to play golf and 3 hours later I caved and went to make the damn cocoa and guess what! Tom had made the last of the cocoa, not told me, and now I was the one who said yes but wasn't going to be able to follow through. I think Tom set me up.
I briefly contemplated making actual cocoa on the stove, but then I remembered that I had bought a pouch of overpriced peppermint flavored cocoa mix 5 years ago and it was smashed into a ball in the back of a cupboard.  SO I told Tommy I could make him only one cup of cocoa, that this was special cocoa, the only one of its kind in the entire world, and he would have to savor it and drink it slowly because after that there was no more cocoa in the house anywhere at all. Got it? He agreed.
Ninety seconds later he handed me an empty and oddly clean cup and asked for more special cocoa. 

Or it could all just be random and without meaning at all.

If God really did never give us any more than we could handle, wouldn't we all be immortal?  I mean, He gives us cancer, and sometimes it kills us so obviously we can't all handle that.  And He gives us depression, which some of us can't handle. In fact, if I really did believe that some dude was deliberately handing out every random occurrence in my life, I think I'd be pretty pissed off that He handpicked the "brain cancer in her 60s" card for my mom.  Because really, what a prick!

but she's my Mommy, and some part of me thinks she may ground me

I guess most people grow up knowing that some day their parents will, gods willing, be old and they'll have to take care of them.  We expect to outlive our folks and we expect that at some point the balance of power will shift and they'll be the kids and we'll become the parents.  But try pulling rank on a woman who isn't shitting herself, who does remember you, and every stupid thing you've ever done to call your judgment into question.  Try putting on your stern face and saying "No!" to someone who will always, because experience dictates it, hear your voice say that word in a whiny teenage tone.  Mom's being pretty good about listening to me enforce the doctor's orders, but I am well aware that I possess no more rank than she permits me to have. If she really wanted to take a shower, stitches and all, I'm not sure anything short of body slamming her in the hallway could convince her otherwise.  And this is all (so far) temporary, so if we're all lucky things will go back to normal soon and I'll be her kid and she'll be a parent of an adult with no real authority but still the ability to make me feel guilty with a stern look, and I won't have to worry about it.  But it also means I can't burn any bridges right now.  I can't just say "You're a sick old lady and I'm the one without a big gash up the back of my head so listen to me or be put in a home!" or whatever else you say to parents when they get all sassy.  At least she's lucid.  I can't even imagine how hard this would be if she didn't understand why I was pulling rank, or if she tried to fight me physically.  If she gets Alzheimer's, I'm shipping her up to my brother in Chicago.  We don't get along well anyway, so I won't worry about burning that bridge.  :D

Limitless information, at my unwilling fingertips

It just occurred to me that I could probably google the survival rates for metastatic brain cancer. But I can't. And yet now that I know that it's out there it makes it kinda worse. I really really hate my uncle for making me say all that out loud yesterday. It was easier before I said it out loud.

hahaha I think I broke my uncle.

So "Emmanuel" called me last night wondering if I wanted to ride with him when he went to visit Mom today and I had to tell him that she didn't want visitors.  At all. No exceptions. So he got all sad and pouty on the phone. Then he asked how she was doing, so I told him what I thought was good news. I said that she's recovering wonderfully and could come home now except that they want to keep her to run some more tests because they can't figure out where the cancer came from so they're just gonna do another scan.

"She has cancer?"

*shake my head.*  *smack my forehead*
"Emmanuel, she just had a brain tumor removed. She has cancer.  Didn't she tell you that?"

"She said they didn't know what it was or where it came from."

"They don't know where it came from. It's not brain cancer; it didn't start there. It spread to the brain and they don't know where it started or where else it is."

"But they took it all out, right?"

"They took out the big tumor. They couldn't get to the little ones so they're going to get them with chemo and radiation and hope that gets them wherever they came from."

"I don't know what that means. What do you mean, where it came from? And what other tumors?"

"Em, this isn't something they caught early. She has Stage 3 or 4 cancer. It is spreading throughout her body and is in her brain  now. She has cancer and they say she's had it for a while, and they can't find all of it."


Sometimes it's funny to mess with idiot family members.  Sometimes it's just sad.  I think I'll just text "Sheila" if I ever have anything really bad to tell him. On the bright side, though, Mom called me today while I was at the grocery store and told me I needed to come pick her up because they were sending her home today anyway.  But just in case you've never tried to get into the University of Iowa Hospital as a University of Iowa football game let out directly across the street, let me just advise you never to try. The fucking cops won't let you in the parking garages, there are tailgaters in there if you do manage to sneak in, and the football fans all act irritated that the hospital doesn't just shut down for them.  We live in a really fucked up society when football trumps hospitals as a priority.

A letter to unnamed members of my family

I shall call her Sheila, and he Emmanuel, because those are in no way their names so if they ever read this they can't really sue me.

Dear Sheila,
I realize that you still blame me for reporting you to the state for medical neglect, even though I didn't report you and you were totally guilty of medical neglect, for the time you joked on facebook about how your diabetic 4 year old's blood sugar was in the 400s and it was so cute that he didn't understand why he felt sick while you didn't take him to the hospital, and then followed up with the fact that you were told by his doctor to take him to the hospital at 300 but just wouldn't.  Yeah, that happened but I forgive you.  For the accusation, not for being an awful mother, but we'll let the state handle that.  Anyway, about your dad.
He's a vagina. Sorry to be blunt but he's a big weepy ball of mess.  I understand that you hero-worship him in a way bordering on creepy and West Virginia, and that he's totally the most wonderful man ever to gut animals for fun, but he needs to stop blubbering on my mother about my mother. Seriously, you cannot call someone who is scared for her life and bawl incoherently into the phone about how scared you are for her life. This isn't about him, and she had about a million more important things to focus on than making him feel better. Give him a xanax, tuck him into bed (because I totally believe you do that already) and take away the cell phone.

Also, I text. When I get news about mom, I go through my phone and send out one update to about half a dozen people.  If Emmanuel doesn't know how to text, or can't afford to text, then he doesn't get updated. Not just because he makes me want to punch him in his weepy face, but because I simply do not have the time to call everyone who wants updates. I am not going to tell a brain surgeon to hold on while I call your father. Not gonna happen. Because I'm a bitch that way.

So, good luck with the whole reverse Oedipal thing, and the son you'll make blind before he becomes a teenager, and I'll text you updates if I feel like it. Or not. Whatever.

Love,
the black sheep

a quick update

I have no patience these last few days. I have this big huge thing in my life to think about and it just seems like the bullshit minutiae of life should step back for it but it doesn't.  I still ave to unload the dishwasher and come up with something for lunch and dinner every day, and why doesn't all this crap just take care of itself? I have brain tumors to google!

My mother uses a walker now, which is great because now she doesn't have to walk along walls to keep from falling down, but it also makes her look old and frail. As we walked into the Iowa City hospital I suddenly realized how we looked to people. The frail and unsteady woman being held up by her paunchy and balding son, accompanied by her overweight, gray-haired daughter. I had an almost overwhelming urge to tell the doctor that this wasn't real. That's not who we are.  My mother is strong and independent. My brother and I are young. His thinning hair is a joke because it doesn't fit him, and my grays are quirky and premature. We aren't old and we aren't sad or pitiful and the doctor has to make everything right again. Mom doesn't stand between us for support. She stands between us as support, and we need to get back to that again.

I don't want to know

Tomorrow we go to Iowa City to talk to the neurosurgeon. I am so scared.

It's like a fashion.

Oh my god! Cancer is a big industry. I mean, you see the ribbons on cars and everything (around here it's all pink and teal, because my town is full of breasts and ovaries) so you know there are shops selling car magnets and silicone bracelets, but I never knew it was so huge. There are multi-colored ribbons, and animal print ribbons because they've run out of colors.  And it must be difficult to A) come to a generally agreed upon consensus as to which color means which cancer, and B) keep it all in good taste.  I mean, breast cancer is pink because boobies = girls, but you can't make colon cancer brown because ewwww. And what if I decide I want mesothelioma to be yellow with pink polka dots but then some group in Colorado wants it to be green and red stripes? What governing board hears our appeals? Who makes the car magnets and silicone bracelets? It would be anarchy!

So I actually clocked something that said "Shop by cancer type" and scrolled through all of the ridiculously colored ribbons (bladder cancer is marigold, blue, and purple, because pale yellow was in poor taste.)  And oh my god there is a brain cancer gift basket!  For only $50 I can buy my mom a whole basket full of crap to constantly remind her of the dangerous chicken egg sitting inside her skull!  Of course, I'm not buying that because we don't know what kind of cancer she even has. It could be from anywhere!  Can you imagine the faux pas of showing up at the chemo office with the wrong car magnet, silicone bracelet, t shirt, necklace, keychain, Swarovski crystal bracelet? It would be mortifying!

It's Nawt A Too-mah!

I don't consider myself to be a hypochondriac, but I can be a tad panicky about some things. My father died from colon cancer and now every time I get a slight intestinal cramp I think to myself, "I need a colonoscopy!"  My mother has MS and I'm always afraid I have it whenever my leg falls asleep for a little longer than normal. 
I get headaches.  I've been popping 800mg Motrins a couple times a day for months now.  And I forget words, and call people by the wrong name, and I tell Ryan to hurry up and do her homework when I mean get ready for bed.  I think I need a peace of mind MRI.  I think for the rest of my life  I will worry that I have brain cancer every time I get dizzy or forget something.  In fact, I'm kinda worried about it already.